Serious! GeForce 9800GTX Problem (Any form of Help/Advice is greatly a

chromatic777

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Hi everyone, hope Y'all having a better day than I am.

I don't know how I get myself into these situations... but... here it goes...

Five moths ago (late December 2008) I bought the BFG GeForce 9800GTX OC graphics card,
during that time I wasn't doing any gaming. Then in January I was plaing NFS Carbon when, on
exiting the game my PSU exploded (with a loud BANG!). My PC configuration was:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Processor (3GHz, no overclocking)
BFG Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX OC Video Card (700mhz on Core, 1100 mhz on memory and 1728 mhz on shader, factory overclocked)
4x1GB PQI Turbo memory (all DDR 2 - 800)
750 GB Western Digital Caviar SATA II Hard Drive
40GB IDE Hard Drive
M2N32 SLI Deluxe Motherboard WiFi Edition
3x 120mm, 3x 80mm Case fans, 1x CPU fan, 1x GPU fan and 2x PSU fans
550 Watt PSU, with 25 AMPS on the +12V rail
Windows Vista Ultime 64-bit Operating System

After a few weeks I found a solution, I had an old PSU (a generic 450 Watt with 22 Amps on
the single +12V rail) but the auxiliary 4-pin connector was burned off so I got my old pc
(specs below) which had a 350 Watt PSU with 13 Amps on the +12V rail and connected them up.
I was relieved to see that nothing was damaged. The connections were a bit complicated but
the two power supplies powered the following:

450 Watt with 22 Amps on the +12V rail:
1) Main motherboard power connector (24-pin)
2) Graphics card (via a 2x 4-pin to 1x 6-pin converter)
3) 2x 120mm fans

350 Watt with 13 Amps on the +12V rail:
1) 4-pin connector to main PC
2) Both hard drives (via a 1x 4-pin to 2x SATA II converter and a standard molex for IDE)
3) Optical drive
1) The old computer (20-pin)
- I unplugged all the other connectors except the 20-pin main connector (because this was
needed to start the computer & power supply which then delivered power through the 4-pin auxiliary
connector to the main PC)

The old pc specs are:
1) AMD Duron 950 processor
2) 1x 256 MB DDR (shared due to int. graphics)
3) Int. graphics

I was constantly receiving a low voltage from the 450W so I moved most things over to the
350W (this was more stable, but still low) I tried to reduce the system's power consumption
by:

Removing:
1) 2x 1 GB of RAM
2) 1x 120mm case fan, 3x 80mm case fans
3) Enabling AMD's cool n' quite feature of the Processor
4) Enabling Vista's balanced power scheme

The system ran like this for 5 months from January to May, then I managed to save enough money to buy a new power supply, this was a Logisys 650 Watt with 44 Amps on two +12V rails (i.e 22 Amps on +12V1 and 22 Amps on +12V2).
After I connected it up in my system it booted up just fine then after about ~4 minutes on
the desktop the screen went berserk, the screen became flooded with artifacts. I immediately
rebooted the PC via the reset button but as the monitor came on after the system posted I
could see the artifacts on the screen before the OS was even loaded, which by this time was
Windows 7 Beta version Build 7068 32-bit. When I logged in win7 switched to basic mode with
no aero and when I opened GPU-Z a lot of information about the card was missing, the core,
memory and shader all read 0 mhz.
Sorry if theres too much info but this is a serious problem because my motherboard does not
have integrated graphics and it would be too costly to buy a new graphics card of equivalent performance, so there is
no way for me to use the pc as the artifact are unbearable but when I take a screenshot via the 'Print Screen SysRq' button there are no artifacts, at this moment I'm using the old Duron to type this. Any form of advice is greatly appreciated.
 

computabug

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Mar 17, 2009
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Ouch... that hurts just reading it. I guess we're all supposing that your vid card is fried. Sue Logisys! lol I've never even heard of that company. If you haven't already, try reinstalling your OS. Then flash the BIOS on your video card. You may also want to test your PSU with one of those voltmeter things for PSU's, or if you don't have one, just jump the PSU and see if the fan spins up. If the PSU's crap, RMA it with a threat to sue lol. It's probably also worth a try to RMA the vid card, since you didn't OC it or anything... (right? lol)

Man, I've never heard of your bizarre set-up... ftw sharing a psu between mobo's lmao. Just out of curiosity, how do you turn on the 2nd PSU if you're using 2 PSU's on one mobo with 1 24pin connector?

See, this is what you get for cheaping out on PSU's. Next time, save up for Corsair's 400CX, one of my favourite PSU's ever, and only around 30 bucks. 30amps on one 12V rail, meshed, active 99% PFC and rock solid with super long cables that reach through an Antec 1200. Or PC Power and Cooling, never tried them, but they've got some rock solid PSU's too. Best of luck with your hardware.
 

chromatic777

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Well the weirdest thing happened, it somehow seems to have corrected itself today, but I'm crossing my fingers I'm going to do some stability testing on the cracd and hope for the best.. because when I was just trying to run Win7's performance rating the pc powered off with no warning, (i.e. the screen just went blank).

@computabug; To power on the second PSU I just powered on the old computer because it was still connected to the old computer via the 20-pin connector and then I turned on the main pc.

PS.. any advice on a good program to test GPU stability?
 

computabug

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But then, how do you synch when they power up? I mean if something powers on a second late, POST won't find it...

And you can try a program from futuremark.com, like 3dmark or something. I believe OCCT stresses your GPU with CUDA technology... never tried it since I have ATI though.
 

chromatic777

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Thanks 4 ur support computabug.. but I did some research on the power supply (i.e. I searched for it on newegg and read the comments :D) and it turns out that a number of people were having the same problem with it. It has some strange problem that would have made it impossible for me to run my 9800GTX, so I returned it to the store and I got to trade it in for a different one. I took an Apevia and I'm using now with no problems, games are running great.
Still keeping my fingers crossed because anything could still happen.
:D
 

computabug

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Glad to hear that :) even though I've never heard of Apevia before... lol

Who would've thought that a psu could be 'incompatible' with a graphics card? :na: learned something new today :D

Just make sure you've got at around 24 amps on your 12v rail. It seems that most of Apevia's PSU's have 2 rails... I think you can get one of those Y adapters to combine the power of the 2 rails. But since you're already running it no problems, I guess you don't need to do that :) Like you said, anything could still happen :p

(psst... get Corsair next time....)